


The Games You Play

by Recourse



Series: Book and Candle [1]
Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Alternative Universe - Witches, Ambiguous Relationships, Angst, Body Horror, Depression, F/F, F/M, Gen, Mental Illness, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-29
Updated: 2016-08-09
Packaged: 2018-07-27 11:07:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7615678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Recourse/pseuds/Recourse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chloe Price, the sorceress who was cast aside. Victoria Chase, the witch who casts no spells. Frank Bowers, the spell-seller with the pet dragon. Mark Jefferson, the monster hiding in plain sight.</p><p>Rachel Amber has found all the magical curiosities of Blackwell Academy. With hopes of rising above them all, she weaves a web of love and lies. Until a single strand snaps, and everything starts to unravel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Beguiled

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my combination witch AU/tribute to obscure short-lived band Splashdown (all the chapter/story titles are taken from their work.)
> 
> Look, I don't know either.
> 
> I am Mogatrat and Mogatrat is me. This is my linking of the two accounts, as well as being a strange AU experiment.

Chloe loves this place.

It takes almost an hour to get here from the Academy, nearly two from her own house. It sits at the edge of the Wilds, the faint shimmer of the wards visible just beyond the abandoned shack at the end of the overgrown path. The forest is near-black beyond that invisible wall, prehensile vines writhing against the barrier until they shrivel and fall. Every day they try to break through. Every day they fail.

Chloe loves this place because as she walks up the long hill she can watch that struggle. She loves this place because at times she can see the real dangers of the Wilds, the stalking furry creatures and the slithering red salamanders and the glowing insects, all trying to peer in on her, but all more knowledgeable than the plants, all understanding their own place in her world. She feels powerful when she watches them watch her.

She loves this place because of the detritus scattered across the ground, burnt-out gems and shattered mirrors and broken statues, piled up, the remains of failed spells and rituals all dumped out here to rot. There’s no official reason that this is where they go. Nobody keeps watch on this waste pile, no one ever set anything down in writing. It’s just where you put things when you fuck up.

They make the air sing with potential energy. To Chloe, it feels like the fire that’s always at her fingertips, but instead of being called to her at will, in short bursts of pain and panic, it’s a surrounding warmth.

And she loves this place because that abandoned shack isn’t really abandoned. Not for a couple of years now. She loves this place because it belongs to her and Rachel Amber.

She shifts the pack on her back as she steps up to the door, feeling the weight of the contents. Rachel’s lists are always interesting, but this one was particularly so. She had to think for quite some time to work out what ‘pieces of the sky’ meant. Sometimes she groans that Rachel _could_ just write things down like a normal person, but she smiles as she thinks of the time she’s spent working out riddles. A much better way to use time than what she normally does when Rachel’s in class.

She rubs the burn on her wrist. Mild, this time. No healing rituals required. Much better to think of riddles than to think of melting skin and charring bone.

She purses her lips. Don’t be like this. Not around Rachel. Everything has to be fun around Rachel.

She knocks on the door. She could just walk in, she knows, but Rachel likes this game.

“What young whippersnapper comes to my door?” Rachel calls from behind the wood, faking an old-crone voice and sounding more like she’s just got a sore throat.

“Oh, great witch, it is but a poor sorceress-child,” Chloe says, grasping her hands in front of her. “Come to seek your wisdom and skill.”

“And what does she need that for, hmm?”

“To make her hair blue!”

A heavy sigh from beyond the door. “Oh, I suppose I could whip something up...”

And with that, Rachel reveals herself, swinging the door open and beaming at Chloe, and just like always, Chloe’s dumbstruck. She likes this game, too. It means Rachel’s always a gift.

She’s always radiant, that long blonde hair, the single blue feather, the slightly-shabby-but-never-too-shabby dresses she wears in red and black, short enough to show her thighs. She never looks like a Blackwell Academy student, never looks like a prim and proper witch, she’s no Victoria Chase covered in the latest fashions from far-off cities. That’s why she’s so good.

Chloe resists the same urge she always resists. To pull her close and never let go. Rachel won’t be bound by Chloe. She’s never bound by anyone.

“Well, get your ass in here,” Rachel says, smiling wide and grabbing Chloe’s hand, flinging her into the room. Her hand’s warm until it leaves Chloe’s all too soon. “All right,” Rachel says, putting her hands on her hips. “Lay down in the middle of the circle.”

Chloe surveys the one room of the shack to see what she’s done. The marks of their years here adorn the walls still, incantations in Rachel’s fine script and Chloe’s blocky letters explaining what they’re supposed to mean. Or Chloe’s burned marks, screaming _FUCK ARCADIA_ and _EAT SHIT AND LIVE_ and a thousand other cries of anger and hatred scorched onto the walls on the nights when Rachel couldn’t make it. The cobwebbed window, an egg sac suspended in front of one pane, waiting for some future ritual; Rachel has become quite the spider-farmer. The moth-eaten bed in the corner, the cauldron on top of it for now, because beneath her and covering most of the floor is Rachel’s white chalk circle, runes etched perfectly along its edge.

They always start with circles, Rachel’s rituals. She says it’s a good baseline when she’s making a new spell, lets the gods know where to look so she doesn’t have to infuse some other symbol with meaning. Chloe carefully places her pack on the bed and lowers herself onto the floor, making sure not to smear any part of Rachel’s work.

Rachel hops up onto the bed and pulls out the pieces for her new ritual. “So did I get everything?” Chloe asks, turning her head.

“Hundred percent as usual, Chloe. I keep telling you you’re smart, but you never believe me...” Rachel murmurs as she pulls out the little bag of blue paint chips, carefully scraped off of Chloe’s ceiling.

“Blackwell didn’t believe you either.”

“You’re not Blackwell-smart. I don’t think that’s your path.”

“What, are you a diviner now too? Most people would be cool with just being a shaper, Rach,” Chloe teases.

“I am pretty cool with being a shaper,” Rachel admits.

It’s just one of the many things that makes Rachel so special. Most people know a bit of magic, they use it to animate a broom, to restore spoiled meat, to make a stubborn flower bloom. They know a couple of little spells that they can do consistently, the common and well-worn ones that are so ground into the fabric of the world that they no longer need investment of the soul. Wizards, those are the ones who really study it, and they can do the big complicated stuff, they can cast the wards and heal the injured and cure the diseased by opening themselves to the divine. But Rachel? Rachel has the talent to make her own spells, not just study and cast ones that already exist.

And she’s using that trick here. On Chloe. To make her hair blue.

Rachel is the fucking best.

Chloe grins up at the ceiling as Rachel continues, “But what I’m saying is, I don’t think you were ever going to be some grand sorceress prodigy, learning more about your focus and becoming, I don’t know, grand general firemaster of the army. Not your style.”

“So, what, watchman? City guard?” Chloe asks, because she’s not sure herself. What to do with this inborn talent of hers, this primal magic. It’s not the magic of wizards, reliant on deities and careful study. It comes out of her like emotion itself. Sorcerers are dangerous. That’s the conventional wisdom. Chloe hasn’t done much to prove that wrong.

“How about my little test subject? I’ve been thinking of ways I could...I don’t know...I wanna see if I can change you,” Rachel admits.

Chloe props herself up on her elbows as Rachel pulls out the final item on the list, a pair of scissors. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t like that you got fire as your focus,” Rachel says, biting her lips. “Don’t think I don’t see that burn.”

Chloe claps her hand over the mark in question and then hisses in pain. “It’s no big—”

“I want you to have earth or air or water. Something that’s harder to hurt yourself with. Maybe I could change it.”

Chloe gulps. That’s probably the nicest thing anyone’s said to her in...well. Rachel says a lot of nice lies about her. Maybe since last month, something else Rachel said, probably.

“I’m fine,” Chloe says. “I don’t need you to change me.”

“Will you let me try, someday?” Rachel asks. “Just...as an experiment?”

An experiment. There are a lot of things they’ve ‘experimented’ with. Chloe certainly wouldn’t mind a few more. Maybe not that one specifically, maybe she wants to experiment in a way that isn’t magical, but she can’t say no to Rachel. Never could.

“Yeah, sure. Worst that happens is you kill me, right? Not so bad.”

“Don’t joke about that, Chloe.” Rachel’s voice drops. “Don’t.”

Chloe sighs. “Yeah, sorry, okay.”

“Now lay back down.”

Chloe puts her hands on her stomach and waits as Rachel spreads out the paint chips around her head, threads the scissors through her long blonde hair. She places a small sapphire beside each of Chloe’s ears, then takes the dead blue butterfly Chloe’d bought from that shady apothecary and puts it right on her nose, which, ew. Then Rachel sits between Chloe’s legs, crosses her own, and places her palms up on her knees. She closes her eyes and speaks in the language of the gods.

And that’s not just what Chloe thinks, that’s actually what she’s doing. That’s the shaper’s power, an insight into the divine language that makes up all incantations. Makes her hopeless at writing in human tongues, but it’s always so amazing to hear her magical whispers, new spells spoken for the first time. Always little secrets between Chloe and Rachel, things Rachel doesn’t even share with the Vortex Guild or any of the other myriad friends and mentors she has wrapped around her finger. Just for Chloe. Always just for Chloe.

Chloe can tell that it’s working. She feels the magic rising in the air, flowing up from the chalk circle, crackling in invisible lightning arcs as the gods respond to Rachel’s call. She wonders which one she’s calling on now. She can never remember all their names.

The butterfly on Chloe’s nose suddenly flares up in blue flame and burns into nothing. She can feel the sapphires beside her turning into coal, releasing the magic within them, cracking as they transform. The scissors...well, she can’t see those, but _something’s_ happening up there based on the vibrations they’re sending through the air. And then the ritual is finished, because she hears a distinct _crack_ and there’s a bright flash.

She blinks a few times. Her head feels lighter. She sits up as Rachel beams at her, and realizes something.

“Uh, Rach, where the hell is my hair?” Chloe asks, putting her hands to her head.

“It’s on your head,” Rachel remarks, and it is, but it’s not on Chloe’s shoulders anymore. She looks around, wondering if a bunch of it fell out or something, but maybe it burned up like the butterfly.

“Huh. Was that supposed to happen?” Chloe asks.

“Yeah. Thought you’d look good with short blue hair. I was right.” Rachel sits back on her palms and looks very satisfied.

“You didn’t tell me that part!” Chloe accuses.

“It’s no fun if I don’t surprise you. C’mon, seriously, take a look,” Rachel urges, bringing a hand-mirror out of the purse on her hip and handing it to Chloe.

Rachel is always right.

Chloe smooths back her new blue locks and smiles at herself, despite the bags under her eyes. She looks great. She looks dangerous. She rubs the spot on her right arm where she knows her focus-mark is, under the sleeve. A dangerous, rebellious sorceress, young and wild. She can like that. She can like herself, for now.

“Told you,” Rachel brags, scooting closer. “You look hot.”

“That better not be a pun,” Chloe warns. “That’s my job.”

“You don’t have a job yet, sorceress-child,” Rachel reminds her, shifting herself onto her knees and getting even closer to Chloe. Too close. Too close. Chloe’s head is turning back to thoughts she has in the dark when she’s missing Rachel and thoughts she has whenever she looks at Rachel and—

“But you’re going to be great someday,” Rachel whispers, putting her hands on Chloe’s shoulders. And, oh.

Oh.

This is really happening.

Rachel’s kissing Chloe.

Chloe can’t stop it, she feels it welling in her gut, and she has to jerk her head away before the flame escapes her lips. Just a little burst, thank the entire damned pantheon, and it didn’t get into Rachel’s mouth, just a puff of fire out of her burning face.

Chloe looks away, shaking, tears coming to her eyes. Great. It finally happened and Chloe almost killed Rachel. See if she ever does that again, you already fucked it up, you fuck everything up, even this, the best thing in your life, you had your chance and—

Rachel giggles. “Woah, there,” she says with a smirk. “Very flattering, Chlo, but, like, keep it under control for another second or two, kay?”

“I—I don’t—I’m sorr-” Chloe stutters, not sure what that means, what this means, what any of this—

Rachel’s hand is soft on her cheek, turning her head to face those hazel eyes. “Let’s try that again,” she suggests.

Okay.

Chloe tries that again, and this time she squeezes her hands into fists and keeps the heat there. It doesn’t turn into fire, but she’s burning all the same.

When they pull apart this time, Rachel looks totally content. And smug. “I kept waiting and waiting and _waiting,_ ” Rachel complains, pushing forward again and forcing Chloe’s back against the floor, and now Rachel’s straddling her so that’s not helping the whole burning situation. “I thought, like, at some point she’s gonna kiss me. I’m fucking beautiful, I’m irresistible, and _yet._ ”

“I—I n-never thought you’d...” _Just an experiment,_ her mind always told her. _A curiosity. The sorceress girl who burns herself. The dropout with the warrior stepfather. The weirdo. She can’t actually_ like _you, definitely not the way you like her. You’re just entertainment._

“You thought very wrong.”

And now Rachel’s pinning her to the ground with her mouth and Chloe’s done thinking. For a while.

They end up knocking the cauldron to the floor and rolling on that bed together, because Rachel doesn’t do anything half-hearted and Chloe’s letting her lead. No clothes come off, but when it seems like they finally have to take a break, Chloe feels naked regardless, lying on her back and panting and letting out little streams of smoke from her nostrils. Vulnerable next to Rachel, like always. In love with Rachel, like always.

As she cools down, she has to ask.

“So...what does this mean?”

Rachel shrugs. “It means I like kissing you.”

Oh. Okay then.

Chloe’s not sure why that answer’s not enough. Why it gives her a sort of sick feeling in her stomach. But Rachel just talks like that sometimes. She likes to be mysterious and cool and aloof and sometimes Chloe loves that about her, so she’ll accept the uncertainty. For now.

She wants to be certain but she can wait. Until Rachel takes them both through the Wilds and towards the Citadel, like she always talks about. Shapers don’t belong at Blackwell Academy forever, prestigious as it is. They are born to be bigger than Arcadia.

Rachel seems to think Chloe’s bigger than Arcadia too. That’s the thought that Chloe holds on to that night when they have to take their separate paths. That some day, she’ll leave with Rachel, and all things will be certain.


	2. Conducting Lightning

Victoria hates this place.

She hates Blackwell Academy because it’s her only option. Her only way up. She’s not special. She’s not a diviner like her father, or a shaper like her mother. She’s nothing. She has to crawl her way up, like every other average witch, go the long, slow, hard route of memorization and mastery of spells.

And she hates this place because she knows it really belongs to Rachel Amber. No matter what she pretends.

Hate is what she feels while she draws the circles in her dorm room. It’s what pours out of her mouth when she speaks to others, pounding them down into flat circles for her to step on. It’s what burns her throat as she tries to speak her incantations, tries to call on the goddesses of ambition and envy to curse Rachel Amber, to break her control over the school, to make her hair fall out and to make her skin blemish and her power fade. Anything. She knows so many of these curses. She studies every book in the library to learn who first cast them, what they were used for, what they require.

But when she speaks the language of the gods, they don’t hear her.

They’ve never heard her.

She stares down at her desk, the paltry offerings upon it, the toad and the seven dragonflies circling it, the runes written in chalk between each one. Her hands shake as she clears everything off. She doesn’t know why she keeps doing this. Keeps practicing, keeps studying, keeps lying to pretend that this is something she could ever do. But she’s not good enough. She’s never good enough.

Open your soul to the divine. Ask for their help with humility, accept your powerlessness before them, and they will grant you their power in exchange for your sacrifice. That’s the cardinal rule of witchcraft and wizardry.

Victoria can’t.

And if she could, would she even still want to do this? If she knew she really could hurt Rachel, would she? Would any of this matter, the social status, the control she has over the Guild, making them recite incantations for her to mask her failure, if she could just do this one simple fucking thing?

It’s no use wondering if she could be better. She isn’t. She is who she is.

What a disgusting thought.

She scrubs angrily at the chalk markings, because she’ll be here soon. She always comes around this time, moments after sunset, after she does her little off-campus adventures. Everyone loves to speculate on where she goes, what she does. If Victoria could see her paths through life, like her father does, could she be the one to know everything, not just impressions and guesses and glimpses? Would she care?

Would she simply love Rachel, like everyone else? Or would it still be _this._

A knock at the door.

Victoria stands up, straightens her back, claps her hands together to get the white dust off of them. She opens the door and finds Rachel leaning on the wall beside the frame, like always. Because she used to say, _I want nothing to do with you._ Because she says now, _no one can know._

How Rachel’s found out Victoria’s secret when no one else has, Victoria doesn’t know. Rachel doesn’t give straight answers. It’s part of her whole thing. Just one day, like any other, when they were the first to arrive to the Guild meeting, she knew.

_(“So,” Rachel begins, sitting down right next to Victoria. “You can’t cast spells.”_

_Victoria’s heartbeat skyrockets. Her hands clench into fists. Rachel’s hand lights on her thigh._

_“But you’ve always got the highest marks. Even better than me. What’s that about?”_

_“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” Victoria lies._

_“Sure you don’t. So, your room tonight? Study session?”_

_“Wha—”_

_“C’mon. We should talk about this. Must be awful keeping it a secret.”_

_Victoria swallows, and hate burns inside of her. “You—”_

_“I won’t tell anyone. I just want to know your study secrets. Not so bad, right?” Rachel smiles at her, and it’s blinding, and Victoria says nothing more because Taylor’s walking in._

_She lets Rachel in that night. And the next. And the next.)_

“Come on,” Victoria grunts, grabbing Rachel by the wrist. Rachel slides out of her grasp and waltzes inside at her own pace, surveying the room with a soft smile. Victoria hates that smile, and she especially hates the way it feels when Rachel pairs it with that look she gives, when she meets Victoria’s eyes. Like she could actually like Victoria, in some universe. Like this, this thing they have, isn’t just another way that Rachel Amber controls Blackwell Academy.

Victoria slams the door shut behind Rachel and stands behind her, waiting for the demand. Rachel’s always got ideas, machinations in her head. She wants to know so many things. Victoria wonders how her marks are so high, sometimes, when she always has all these questions. And then she realizes, duh, it’s you, idiot. You’re helping her in her conquest of Blackwell because you’re such a coward. So broken.

Rachel breathes in a little sigh and turns to face Victoria. “You all right, Tori?” she asks, cocking her head to one side, her feather dangling.

“I’m always fine.”

“You’re always not.”

 _Fuck you,_ Victoria’s head seethes. _Fuck how right you always are. How do you always know?_

“Tori,” Rachel says again, putting her hands on Victoria’s waist. “You know you can talk to me, right?”

 _Sure, so you can get more blackmail material. Like you don’t have enough already._ But Victoria’s stuck staring into those hazel eyes. Again. Rachel can still do this, even through all this hate and mistrust. Even through everything that Victoria knows is true, about what they really are to each other, when she looks into Rachel’s eyes she can believe that she actually cares. But she can’t.

Victoria’s not an idiot. She knows what she is. A stepping stone. A crushed competitor, propping Rachel up. And yet, when Rachel steps closer, when their lips meet, she doesn’t pull away. She’s never pulled away, because this is the only time she can pretend that someone actually loves her.

It’s over quickly, of course. Rachel never gives too much. Never commits. If she ever did, she couldn’t do this to everyone, make them feel special this way, the same way that Victoria’s still fucking falling for even though she _knows_ it’s fake. Why does it still work? Why does she still want Rachel to care?

Rachel takes her hand, runs her thumb over her skin. “Victoria. What’s bothering you?”

“What the fuck do you think?” Victoria tugs her hand away.

“I—I can help you practice, if you want, I can try to show you how I do it...”

She’s made this offer before. Victoria’s never taken her up on it. This isn’t a relationship. This isn’t even a friendship. This is just blackmail, that’s all it can be, all it will ever be. And what could Rachel show her that so many other people never could? That her father can’t, her mother can’t, her professors?

Victoria stares at her feet. “Just tell me what you want, Rachel.”

Rachel purses her lips, her heel tapping against the floor. “Can’t I just come by to see you?”

 _Only to tighten the noose,_ Victoria thinks. She stays quiet, sitting down at her desk, staring into its surface. “What do you want?” she asks again.

Rachel sighs, putting her hands on Victoria’s shoulders. “You?” she suggests.

Victoria scoffs. “Come on, Rachel. We know what this is. What do you need this time? Research on sorcerers again? Warlock crap? Crystal balls? Ritual guides? I’ll tell my stupid family, get you your books, whatever. Just tell me.”

Rachel rubs her back, sending shivers through Victoria’s skin. “Maybe after.”

“After what?”

Rachel kisses her neck and Victoria gasps. Pathetic. Still falling for it. No matter what. But she can lose herself, all these thoughts, in Rachel’s touch. The temptation is hard to resist. So hard that she hasn’t managed it so far. She’ll hate herself more, afterwards. She knows she will. But for now...

She lets Rachel lift her up, lets herself be lead to the bed. Rachel is so practiced as she unlaces Victoria’s dress. Victoria wonders how many others she’s had. How many others she might still have, besides her, with everyone worshipping at her feet anyway. She could have anyone she wants. She probably does.

Victoria gets nothing she really wants. But she can have this.

When was the first time this happened? It all blurs together since that first meeting, since _So, you can’t cast spells._ When did they kiss first? Or, more accurately, when did Rachel kiss her? When did Rachel figure that secret out, too? And _how?_ How does she always know?

She always knows what Victoria wants. How Victoria wants to be pinned beneath her and subdued and how she wants to submit. To stop always fighting. To accept someone else’s control and feel something good out of it for once instead of itching inadequacy. And, gods and goddesses and old forgotten deities, does it feel good. It always does, until it’s over.

And when it is over, when Victoria’s lying on her back and Rachel’s beside her, running her fingers along Victoria’s bare stomach, Rachel says something.

“You’re going to be great someday,” she whispers.

“Bullshit,” Victoria snaps. She can tell the truth to Rachel because Rachel already knows anyway. There are no reasons left to lie, even if Victoria still does it by instinct, sometimes.

“I mean it. Just...” Rachel puts her fingers under Victoria’s chin, and meets her eyes. “Think about how you let me in, when we touch. Think about that the next time you try to cast something. Okay?”

Victoria feels bile rising in her throat. “So think of you like a goddess, like every other fucking idiot on this campus? No thanks.”

“Sure. If it works.” Rachel lets out a little giggle, and it’s cute, and Victoria hates that it’s cute.

Victoria turns her head away, scowling. As soon as it’s there, it’s gone, like always. She can never hold onto that moment of peace that comes after Rachel makes her body seize. She’s ready to throw up, ready to wander out into the Wilds and let the creatures take her. Why keep doing this? Why keep faking? Why bother at all?

Rachel’s finger traces her jaw. “You’re so pretty,” she murmurs, and Victoria’s warm.

Victoria floods her own veins with icewater as she says, “So what do you really want?” Stop faking. Stop pretending. You are nothing. Rachel is everything you were supposed to be. Queen of Blackwell, master of magic, the daughter the Chases deserved.

Rachel’s quiet. Then, “I...do need the Consortium report on focus-signs. The one I borrowed last month.”

There we go. Back to reality.

Victoria stands up, Rachel’s fingers trailing down her back, like they’re trying to hold on. Trying to control Victoria further, trying to enslave her heart as well as her brain and her connections. But she won’t take that last step. She doesn’t love Rachel. She’s just getting _something_ out of this deal.

She crouches down in front of her bookcase and finds Rachel’s volume, throws it behind her towards the bed. Rachel catches it effortlessly, of course, and as Victoria turns around, she’s already cracking it open, staring at a page of reproductions of the signs that appear on sorcerers’ bodies at puberty. Victoria spots the sign that must rest somewhere on Chloe’s skin and grimaces.

The sorceress girl who burned herself. The one who dropped out. The one who Victoria had seen Rachel with, one day in the Vortex Club meeting room while Courtney repeated a mantra in front of a crystal ball. As soon as she’d seen Chloe, Victoria slapped Courtney, cut everything off. Cut off any hints of jealousy. Pretended it was blackmail material, boasting that she had something on Rachel now. But she knew nobody would care. Of course Rachel likes her. Rachel likes everyone. She’s everyone’s friend.

“Are you gonna get out or what?” Victoria asks.

“Can’t I stay?”

_Of course you can. I can’t do anything to you._

Victoria sits down beside her and clenches her hands together, staring at them. Wanting to ask what Rachel’s doing. But Rachel doesn’t give straight answers.

Rachel stands up from the bed eventually, taking the book with her. “Thanks, Tori,” she says sweetly, kissing Victoria’s forehead. “This’ll really help.”

 _Help._ Like it’s voluntary. Like Victoria hasn’t been conscripted into being Rachel’s conduit towards greatness. Like they’re equals.

Rachel always lies.

Victoria digs her nails into her palms, waiting for her to go. She looks up and that’s a mistake. Rachel’s chewing on her lip. She actually looks worried.

“Please try tonight, okay?” she asks, putting her hands on Victoria’s shoulders again. “I know you can do it.”

“It’s fucking pointless.”

“For me?”

She’ll ask, next time. If she tried. And if Victoria says she didn’t, Rachel will punish her with her looks and her words and everything that she is. Rachel’s in control. Always in control.

“Just go,” Victoria says, but Rachel’s already leaving.

The room is dark. Moonlight barely outlines anything. Victoria stands again and walks over to her desk. Stares at the candle there.

It’s a simple spell. No components needed. But it’s not burned into the patterns of magic yet, it can’t be done without soul. It’s one of the first spells a real witch is supposed to learn. Everburning fire, a gift from the god of light.

Victoria knows the words, the hand motions, by heart. But her life has remained dark.

_Think about how you let me in._

Someone who will always be better than her. Someone who will always be greater, who has power she can’t dream of. Ask for what you want from him. From her.

She’s never asked Rachel for anything, really. But she wants to. She wants to ask if she’s the only one. Wants to ask what she’s doing. Wants a straight answer.

She pours all of that into her voice as she recites the request.

A flame sparks to life on the tip of the candle.


	3. Lamb And Serpent

Rachel has plans for this place.

That’s what she repeats to herself as she closes the door to Victoria’s room. She has plans, she has plans, she has plans. She can’t get distracted thinking about _this._ What she and Victoria have and don’t have. What she and Chloe have and don’t have.

She puts her back against the door and sighs, after making sure there’s no one else in the hall. Stop it. You have somewhere to be tonight. Like you do every night. You can’t slow down, you can’t hold back. This world won’t wait for you. You have to make your mark, and you have to do it now.

That’s what she’s always been told, since she was old enough to understand who was speaking to her in her dreams. People like her are meant for great things. Everyone else is around just to spur her on, keep her going. This place is here to help her to Citadel, where she will be hosted among the highest of nobility and magical authority, creating new rituals to master the Wilds, to strike out at the enemies of her people, to improve the lives of everyone with new ways to call the gods to the aid of humanity. Everyone looks up to her. Everyone loves her. They call her beautiful and talented and they are so, so sure that someday she’s going to be great. They are little people. They aren’t supposed to matter to someone touched by destiny like Rachel Amber. If they matter, if anyone matters to her besides herself, she’ll lose momentum. She’ll disappoint everyone.

So she takes every angle. She has to. She has to make friends with everyone, find every connection, and she can’t get attached. Can’t get dragged down. She can’t find one person, one version of herself, to be. That’s not what you _do_ if you want to be a master of magic, someone important. If she did, she’d be like Chloe, alone and going nowhere and herself and beautiful and wonderful.

So why did she do it? Why did she kiss Victoria that night? Why does she _keep_ doing it? Why does it hurt when Victoria rejects her, when Victoria tells the truth about who they are to one another? She's right, of course, about why Rachel approached her once Chloe started sharing the way she perceives the world.

_(“And the weird thing about the whole primal-sense thing,” Chloe says, idly juggling a ball of flame, “is that, like, it doesn’t work on everyone? Or it doesn’t always work right. Like, most witches, I can feel their aura, but Vicky? Jack shit.”)_

Victoria was just someone with connections to Citadel, through her parents, high-rollers in the magical ranks, shaping the country’s future through divination and spellcraft alike. Someone she now had an angle on. Someone to exploit.

So why does Rachel still feel sick every time she leaves Victoria’s room, and Victoria is still hating herself? Does she want Victoria to love her like everyone else does?

Or does she want Victoria to love herself, and she just hates that she can’t make that happen?

No. Stop. This is not a productive angle.

You have sex with Victoria because it’s...because it makes sure she’ll keep giving you what you want. You kissed Chloe because...

Well, you just like kissing Chloe.

Rachel tightens her jaw as she marches across campus. There’s another angle to work tonight. The hardest one to manage. The most important one.

_(“Chloe?” Rachel asks, poking Chloe in the shoulder as they sit on the quad. Chloe’s staring nervously at a tall, bearded man as he crosses campus, her eyes narrow, her mouth twisted._

_“Hmm?” Chloe says, but her face doesn’t change._

_“What, hot for teacher or something?” Rachel teases, and Chloe fakes throwing up._

_“Fuckin’ gross, dude. No, it’s just...that guy.”_

_“Professor Jefferson?”_

_“Yeah. That guy.” Chloe purses her lips. “Always get this weird feeling around him. Like his aura is...sick.”_

_“Well, he did get stranded in the Wilds during the last war,” Rachel says. “His whole claim-to-fame is surviving six weeks there with nothing but his spellbook and a bag of gems.”_

_“Mm. Sure. Whatever.” Chloe shudders. “I dunno. Never been out in the Wilds, but he just doesn’t feel like other wizards. Don’t like it. Watch your shit around that guy. Him and that Prescott kid both have it. Prescott’s not as strong, but...it’s there.”_

_A single word floats through Rachel’s head, and it all makes sense._

Warlock. _)_

She heads into the Ritual Department’s building and heads straight to his door, knocking once. It swings open, and he smiles gently down at her.

“Rachel! I didn’t expect to see you again so soon,” he says pleasantly, stepping aside and beckoning her in. As the door closes, he adds, “But after all, our last session was so brief. Must’ve just been a little thing you were cooking up.”

“Just an experiment,” Rachel replies, smiling back. “Worked out pretty well. But now I’m going to need a _long_ session.”

“Ah, I understand.” Mark claps his hands together. “Heading out right away, then?”

“If that works for you.”

“I always have time for my favorite student.” He pauses and chuckles to himself. “Don’t tell Nathan I said that.” His voice is tainted honey. Rachel doesn’t shudder. She turned off those instincts a long time ago. She doesn’t need them. She knows what she’s doing. What she’s messing with.

He glances around, as if anyone could see them through the curtains or the anti-divination wards on his office. Then, he holds out one hand to Rachel. When she takes it, he raises his other hand and curls his fingers inward, a harsh hiss escaping his lips. He draws patterns in the air for a moment, and then he and Rachel are invisible and unknowable.

They leave campus and head straight for the Wilds.

Rachel feels the electric shock as her body passes over the wards, the same one she’s felt so many times by now. The vines part as their unseen bodies make their way through the darkness. Mark is above them in the hierarchy. Mark has mastered them.

_(“A warlock can be a wizard, and a wizard can be a warlock. The gods do not watch us so closely as to know when we are defying their civilizing touch,” Professor Grant begins, stalking in front of her chalkboard during Magical Theory class. “Warlocks are not sorcerers; their talents are not in-born. They are those who have taken the corrupted energies of the Wilds into themselves and made them their own, able to wield arcane energy at their own will rather than relying upon the proper procedures of true wizards._

_But this has always taken a terrible toll. Before the gods started speaking to us, before the first druids and shapers, our greatest leaders were monsters leading armies of sorcerers in brutal conquest. To become a warlock is to deny civilization, to deny safety, security, and charity. It is to become another one of the creatures that lurk in the twisted shadows of the Old Ones, another victim of their fall, to deny the balm that the gods offer us now. It requires an acceptance of the endless, brutal collective murder of the Wilds, to offer yourself up to them as one would to the gods._

_Afterwards, you have the power to shape reality itself, to wield the arcane arts as a demigod. But only as a predator, not a protector, a lover, a mentor, a friend. To become a warlock is to twist yourself into something utterly inhuman in exchange for power.”)_

The invisibility leaves them once they’re out of sight of campus, and so does Mark’s glamour. He is pale, sickly; his hair’s falling out and green veins run up his face into completely-black eyes.

Rachel knows what he is. Rachel knows what she’s doing.

They approach the abandoned barn, long-claimed by the wilds, somewhere that wards failed so long ago that it’s hard to know when, how, or why it happened. But the plants, the vines and the flytraps and the dart-shooters, they all crawl aside to let them open the door, to reveal the trapdoor on the floor. None of the stalking creatures of the night have even appeared to hunt them. They never appear anywhere that Mark is near. They know their place.

Only in the Wilds can Mark truly use his powers, drawing on the energy that the wards oppose. Only here, in this dark cellar under the barn, can he give Rachel what she needs to turn the world on its head.

She steps into the center of the dusty little room, breathing in the scent of rotting meat, left here when the wards failed. Breathing in the smell of blood and sulfur that permeates Wild magic. She stands there and doesn’t flinch when Mark puts his skeletal hand on her shoulder, grinning with thin lips and sharp teeth.

“Are you ready?” he asks.

“Always,” Rachel replies.

He steps back, holds his hands out to his sides, and breathes in. And as his lungs pump, his chest glows red. With each breath, he grows brighter and brighter, red tendrils flaring into existence, tying his fingertips to invisible points throughout the room. Raw magical power from the Wilds, filtering into his body. And, as he flings a hand out towards Rachel, slamming into her gut.

It feels the way it always does. A mass of tentacles and slime expanding and growing and writhing in her stomach, a physical presence, this glut of arcane power. The difference between this and the proper method is staggering. It’s not like before, when Rachel did what she was supposed to do, casting spells, reinforcing wards, gaining the passive aura of witches and wizards from the leftover magic and sending it back to the gods when she created a new ritual. This is hunger made manifest.

She contains it, like she always does. It screams at her, _eat, consume, be consumed,_ but she does not allow it purchase, does not give herself to it like Mark has. It wriggles within her soul, but it will not take control. She will not offer it that deal. If she does, the gods will not speak to her again, and that would ruin everything.

By the time Mark’s finished, Rachel can feel tendrils worming up her throat, threatening to erupt and snare him in, _eat, eat, eat, kill._ But she doesn’t need that instinct either.

He approaches her, a canine smile on his face. “And now,” he says, running a hand down her arm, “we finish our trade.”

Rachel knows what she’s doing. She’s always known the price. The vines crawl down from the walls and form a mass that Mark pushes her down on, sealing his lips on her neck.

She feels nothing.

She tells herself that.

When he’s spent, he waves her off. “Go ahead home,” he says, waving his hand in the air. “They won’t bother you.”

“I know,” Rachel says, adjusting her dress as she stands up. She is on solid footing. She feels nothing. Just another angle.

She walks back to Arcadia, watching the Wilds part before her as if she is a true warlock, as if this hot, sickly weight inside of her is in control. But Rachel is in control. Rachel is in control.

She walks past campus and down into the town proper, walking the cobblestone streets with purpose until she finds the Bower of Bowers. No light shines through the window, no indication that this little apothecary is open for business. But like everything in Arcadia, this too will bow to Rachel.

She knocks twice. A candle inside lights up and spreads flickering orange across her face as it spills in through the window in the door. Inside, something hisses, and then Frank tells it to shut up, it’s just Rachel.

“Just Rachel.” There is no “Just Rachel.” Rachel knows that, she’s always known that, always been told that. She will be great. That’s what she’s doing, taking the steps to be great.

Frank knows that too, because he looks just like Chloe does, whenever they meet. Awestruck that she’s still paying attention to him. Of course she is.

She gives him a hug, and something lurches inside her, some objection of the energy she’s still carrying. She ignores it and steps inside, crouching down to greet the little dragon that’s hopped down from the counter. He puts his claws on her chest and thrums happily while Rachel smooths back his scales.

The traveling apothecary with the pet dragon. A curiosity, like the self-burning sorceress, the witch who casts no spells, the warlock hiding amongst the students. But it was more than just that; Frank was someone she connected with immediately. Someone who’d braved the Wilds and brought back a token of that.

Rachel strokes the feather dangling from her ear. Plucked from a roc chick when she was just twelve, spotting this huge blue bird just beyond the wards and wanting to touch it. She’ll never part with it.

That’s what she’s making sure of tonight.

“So, what’s up, Rach?” Frank asks, leaning against the counter. “Looking for weird shit again?”

“Depends on what kind of weird shit you mean,” Rachel tells him with a smile.

“Well, I got you a couple of those vine cuttings you wanted,” Frank says, fingering the little claw-charm around his neck. Frank’s druidic powers come in handy for his job. Only those like him can wander the Wilds without being consumed by the forces at work there. Rachel wonders what Chloe feels when she's around Frank’s natural wards. “Right from the skull of the Old One. Like you said. Rachel, you know you’re crazy, right?”

“Oh, I know.” Rachel smiles. “But you love it.”

Frank steps closer and wraps his arms around her waist. When the claw touches Rachel’s chest, her skin squirms. “I do,” he says with a grin. “You’re the coolest fucking person in Arcadia, you know that? Nobody else gives me _shit_ to do. It’s all, like, boring-ass grasshoppers or eye of newt or whatever the fuck, nobody sends me out into the Wilds.”

“Well, other people probably pay you,” Rachel remarks, stepping back. She’s not shaking. She can’t let it show, what she’s done.

“Who needs money for adventures, babe? You should come with me sometime. I swear we’ll be totally safe.” Frank steps back and tugs off the bracelet Rachel gave him, holding it out to her. “Here, look, I made it into a charm.”

Rachel carefully takes the simple bead chain, dangling it from one finger, spinning it around in the light. As she does, she catches flashes of blue runes, glinting in the candlelight, faintly glowing.

“It’s actually kind of cool out there, when you’re not worried about some werewolf chompin’ on you,” Frank pleads. “You can...”

The energies within Rachel are roiling, screaming in her ears, _run, run, RUN, RUN,_ and without meaning to, Rachel drops the bracelet to the floor.

“Woah, Rach,” Frank says, putting a hand on her shoulder. “You okay?”

She swallows. “Uh, yeah. Sorry, just — think I’m getting sick, or something. When I’m better, I’m totally taking you up on that, though!” And she wants to. She wants to see the Wilds in the daylight, observe the world of the fallen gods, see what really lies outside the borders as an observer instead of a participant in the dark dance of life out there.

There are so many things she wants to do that don’t bring her closer to Citadel. That don’t come closer and closer to that dream she’s had for so long, a spell that will change the world. Things like making Chloe’s hair blue, things like making Victoria understand how smart she is, things like turning Mark in and ending his quiet evil.

Things like touching Frank now, even as she contains that quiet evil for just a bit longer. She reaches up and strokes his cheek, smiling despite the pain inside of her. He’s really something special. They all are. But Rachel’s more special.

Right?

She swallows her misgivings, her doubts, again. “Actually, what I need tonight is the components for soulbonding, and a couple more things I’m sure you’ve got scattered around,” Rachel says.

Frank claps his hands together. “Ooh, sounds fun.”

“Also we’re totally having some of that augurnut before I go. I see that little bowl in the corner.”

“Sounds more fun. All right, what d’ya need?”

Rachel leads him through the list of things she’s thought of for this ritual. This insurance policy. Because she knows what she’s doing.

 _(“There is no safe way to deal with a warlock,” Professor Grant warns. “Like all creatures of the Wilds, to maintain the vitality of the corrupted arcane power within them, they need to kill, to feed. And they need to kill_ humans. _That’s why the Warlock’s Alliance is still at war with us, after all these years, even as we slowly shrink the wilds. They need us. God-touched blood, diviners and shapers and druids, is particularly valuable to a warlock...”)_

Once everything’s gathered up and ready for her in a satchel, they retire to the upstairs, Frank’s dragon waiting at the counter to scare away any would-be thieves. Frank takes the bowl of red nuts with him, and as they settle onto his bed, they chew until their teeth turn scarlet with paste, until their bodies hum and their vision wavers, until Rachel is straddling Frank and lifting the charm off his neck and setting it down on the nightstand. So she can kiss him. So she can love him, for a while, until she has to leave him, until she has to leave everyone.

The buzz of the drugs is drowning out the incessant voices in her head that tell her to not get attached. That great witches stand alone, above the small people, that no one can stop her ascendance so long as she doesn’t let them.

Frank is warm and welcoming beneath her. Frank is special. Frank is kind, even if so many in town call him strange, think he’s a dangerous lunatic who wanders in the Wilds and doesn’t follow any kind of proper procedure in his trade. Frank is not Mark, and with the tingle of the red nuts running through her, that seems to be enough.

As she lies beside him, running a finger through his chest hair, he frowns up at the ceiling.

“Rach, what are you doing with me?” he asks.

He’s the only one who’s asked that. So directly. Chloe had asked, _So what does this mean?_ and Rachel had no answer for that. Rachel has an answer for this, but she can’t say it.

“What do you mean?” she replies instead.

“I’m just—I dunno. Like, I could buy the rest of this. Me trying to impress you with my Wild-running bullshit, getting all your shit for you. But...” He sighs. “I’m sure there’s better people for you, out there somewhere. People who aren’t stuck here, making a living off selling cheap spells to snot-nosed Blackwell brats. People you can move up with.”

And so he adds his voice to the voice of her parents, her teachers, everyone she’s ever known who so wants her to be the greatest witch of her generation.

“You’re special,” she tells him, and that’s the truth. “Dude, Frank, you’ve got a pet dragon. Any girl who doesn’t dig that is crazy.”

Frank chuckles. “Okay, whatever, fine. That works.”

Rachel giggles and kisses his cheek, and it’s not until he falls asleep that she dresses, gathers up her things, and heads back to her dorm, aching all the while. Aching to stop. Settle down. Spend another year or two here and work out where she wants to stand.

But what she has to do, what she’s meant to do, what she’s always been meant to do, is more important.

In her dorm room, she removes her feather earring and places it in a small circle, already drawn on the desk just before she went to see Chloe. She digs in her satchel.

Three emeralds. A red thread, tying them together. Just a drop of blood, staining the center of the feather as it drips from a tiny cut on her finger. For such a small object, soulbonding requires little in the way of offerings.

She calls upon the god of love, and watches the gems turn to coal, the red thread shrivel, the blood evaporate. She touches the feather and knows it’s been done. No one can ever touch it now but her, and when she dies, it will die with her.

Now, the new spell.

She wipes away the chalk circle, draws a new one, with runes that call upon the goddess of vengeance. She hears a whisper in her mind. _I hear you, shaper._ The waiting breath of the deity fills her mind as she draws out the new components. A mousetrap. Six diamonds. Six rubies. The corpse of a Punisher faerie, dead of natural causes; for when one slaps at this glowing insect, it explodes in magic and evaporates, cracking druid’s charms, disabling wards, even killing any nearby plants and animals that have taken in the Old Ones’ corruption. Symbols of Rachel’s new contingency.

 _Goddess, grant me your powers,_ Rachel begins, the divine language coming into her mind even as the writhing power within her begins to fade, leeching off into the ether, the goddess greedily sucking it out of her without a care for where it came from. _When this object is destroyed, let it release a terrible vengeance upon the world that has done such a thing._

Rachel gasps as she feels the weight in her stomach leave her. _I will heed this call,_ the goddess hisses, and then she is silent.

Rachel performs her new ritual right away, speaking the words aloud this time.

If this triggers, if it turns out that all of this, all this effort, all this pain, all this self-denial, is to be met only with death, then Rachel will ensure that this place dies. That everyone who told her to reach for the stars feels what it’s like to do so and be burned.

She is shaking, now. She can’t help it, and besides, she’s out of sight now. No one will know.

Mark’s touch burns on her skin. She wants to throw up. She wants to run. She wants to stop. She wants to love and be loved.

But if she does, then all of this would have been for nothing anyway. So she has to keep going. A spell to change the world.

She already knows what it is. She is ready to craft it. And to cast it. And despite everything, she can’t help thinking about what it’s really going to be, besides her way to make Citadel stand up and take notice of her. That should be all it is, but it’s not. It’s something else too.

A gift for Chloe.


	4. Misfortune's Burn

Chloe pounds up the stairs, slamming down hard on each step to drown out David’s voice.

“Don’t you walk away from me!” David calls, sending a burst of air up against Chloe’s back. She trips on the last step and falls forward, smashing her nose into the floor.

She chokes, and seethes at herself. No. You’re not crying. You’re fine, you’re strong, _fuck that guy._ She stands and wipes the blood from her nose, shoulders raised, fists clenched at her sides, waiting for the burn in her eyes to pass so she can move again.

“I—I didn’t mean to do that, Chloe,” David stammers from the bottom of the stairs. ”But you need to _respect me._ ”

There we go. Anger’s back, making itself known in the smoke pouring from her palms.

“What would your father say?” David challenges. “If he saw his daughter screwing around with the same kind of shit that got him—”

She turns, wrenches her door open, and slams it shut. She locks it behind her. And she doesn’t cry. She does not cry.

David’s gotten into bringing up Dad, ever since Chloe came home with blue hair. He knows it hurts. He thinks he can hurt Chloe enough to make her his little servant.

“Open this door!” David yells, slamming his fist into the wood. Wind rushes under the crack in the door. Chloe’s smouldering. Her clothes pour black smoke from every crevice, swirling in the cyclone of David’s rage.

He must smell the smoke, because he stops knocking. “Fine!” he spits. “You can stay in there until you’re ready to act like an adult. You’re not leaving this house until you figure out what you’re doing with your life, and if I find out you’re still hanging around that Vortex Guild slut—”

Chloe whirls and a ring of flame twirls out from her torso, scorching the walls, igniting books on the shelves which _of course_ are right at the level it came out at, and the crackle of flame fills the room.

Silence but for the sound of Chloe’s stupid, impulsive destruction.

“Chloe?”

“Go. The fuck. Away,” Chloe breathes, a lump in her throat.

“This is my house, Chloe. I’m always here, and until you take some responsibility and decide to be worth something, you’re always here too.” He thumps back down the stairs. Satisfied with his work.

Chloe’s catching fire. Her clothes start to burn away. She remembers all those stories. Sorcerer kids, first getting their powers. Instead of commanding the primal energies within them, they get consumed by them. Twelve-year-olds boiling the blood in their veins, young boys discovered suffocated under mounds of earth, children falling from the sky and shattering their skulls. Fourteen-year-old girls, found burned to a crisp, charred skeletons in demolished rooms.

All those tales she read, over and over and over, when her powers started manifesting. It seemed like another cruel joke. Her best friend leaves Arcadia for good. Her father is killed by an imperfect ritual, interacting with his own gift and filling his lungs with fluid. Her mother marries the warrior with the burn scars on his face. And now Chloe can command the same fire that sent him back home.

She wishes she’d discovered her powers that way. That one day, she’d just burned up and relieved everyone of the burden, the trash, the worthless dead weight that is Chloe Elizabeth Price. Maybe just do it, right now. Flare out in a moment of glory and kill David and burn this broken home to the ground.

Only when she smells the rank odor of burning hair does the fire stop building. She gasps, clutching at the strands, but thankfully it only singed the tips. She breathes, in and out, and the heat simmers down and settles back into her heart. Her blue hair. That’s the sign of why she can’t, not now, not ever. She can’t die when Rachel thinks the world of her, tells her she’ll be something great. She can’t disappoint Rachel. Rachel loves her.

No. Rachel likes kissing her.

But maybe that can be more, someday, right? You don’t just kiss people you’re never going to love, right?

Except you can. Chloe knows that, she’s remembering as she falls onto her bed and curls her limbs up. She did it. For a while. Guys. Trying to feel something, when Rachel was so far away, and she had...friends, and she liked being with them, sometimes more than Chloe, so it must be good, right?

She was never going to love them. How can she sit here and think Rachel’s ever going to love her?

She takes a look around her room and curses at herself. She holds out her hand and extinguishes the last few objects she’d ignited before they turn to cinders. They aren’t what deserve to be destroyed. She always knows what she really wants to burn.

And then she realizes what she’s done in yet another stupid loss of control. She scrambles to her feet and runs over to the shelves next to her closet, running her fingers along its surface until they come across the note, the lock of hair tied to it. Kept there, gathering dust, for so long. There used to be a crystal ball on top of it, until one day, that just disappeared. Just like Max herself, that last gift, the promise of communication, was snatched away from her.

Chloe’s afraid to drag it down. To see what she’s done, because she remembers. The day that crystal ball went missing, it’d already been almost six months since Max left, and it never started to glow like she said it would. No sign of an attempt to establish the link. And Chloe hadn’t been able to work up the nerve, rolling the ball over in her hands, reading the incantation that Max had written down for her but never speaking it aloud. Because she’s off in some far-off city, a real city, among people who matter. Why would she want to talk to Chloe?

She remembers not noticing it was gone until the end of the day, tearing the house apart searching for it, and David telling her to calm down, to not make such a big deal out of it, it’s not like you were talking anyway. Screaming at David, and being restrained by belts of furious wind, forced into her room. She remembers everything her head told her.

_Useless piece of shit. You’re totally alone now, and who’s fault is that? Can’t even keep hold of your own shit. Can’t even get over your dad even though Mom clearly has._

She remembers searing her own flesh for the first time just to shut it up.

But she has to know. If she’s really lost everything from her life before David, at last. Because she can’t help fucking up. It’s just who she is, isn’t it?

She pulls the note down and stares at the damage she did, and...

The note itself is fine. The hair’s a little singed, smells like shit. She pulls back the thread to read the incantation again, the little message Max wrote for her.

_We’ll talk again. I know we will._

That had been so comforting, all those years ago. Max pulling out her ‘I’m a diviner so I’m always right’ card just one more time. Now, she dreads reading this. If it’s not true, Max was lying. If it is true, their next meeting is going to be hell.

Such a coward. Such an _idiot._ Why does it even matter if this is still around? You can’t use it, and even if you could, you wouldn’t, and Max clearly never really wanted to talk to you. She was glad to get away from you. Rachel will do it too, she’ll run off to Citadel and leave you stranded here, and you deserve it, just like David says.

The jet of blue flame ignites before she even realizes that she’s doing it. The same kind she always uses, her fingertips gathered together to a point to form the torch. Her mind is screaming a thousand different truths and she needs to narrow it all down. Turn it real. Turn it physical. Focus. Drop the note.

She brings the fire under her wrist and hears the familiar sound of evaporating hairs, of cracking flesh, tears spilling from her eyes as she runs the torch up and down, up and down. Her mind, for a moment, is nothing but blinding white pain, and when she cries she cries with relief.

She pictures it, letting it burn right through her, melting her flesh down to the bone and blackening that bone until it crumbles into ash. Until she bleeds out on the floor and leaves her body to be taken out and dumped in the Wilds where it belongs. And then something else comes to her.

Rachel’s voice pleading with the gods to mend her skin. Rachel running her hands along the restored flesh, whispering, “Please, please stop. For me, please stop.”

Chloe gasps and pulls her hand away, shaking. Rachel cares. She must care. She has to care. If she doesn’t care then Chloe might as well just fucking destroy herself.

But Chloe’s brain is telling her that Rachel can’t care, so Chloe needs Rachel to show it. Even if she can’t say it, for whatever Rachel reasons she has.

She discards the ragged remains of her clothes and digs in her closet for another set of trousers, another ragged tunic. Blood smears the sleeve. She clenches those fingers into a fist, drawing more droplets of red out, hissing at the pain, reveling in the pain. She walks over to her window and throws herself out of it, like so many other nights before this one. She hopes David’s too drunk to care by now as she lands poorly, twisting her ankle and letting out an involuntary cry.

She limps down the road, towards Blackwell. Rachel will fix it. Rachel has to care.

It’s a long walk.

But she makes it there, even though she’s growing faint by the time she pushes in the door to the Prescott Dormitories and making her way down to Rachel’s room. She knocks on her door. Knocks again, and then one more time, and she’s not going to answer, is she. She’s somewhere else, doing something important. Why’d you ever think she’d have time for your worthless ass?

But then the door does open, and Rachel is there, chalk dust on her fingertips. She looks down at Chloe’s arm and gasps.

“Holy shit, Chloe!” she says, stepping forward. “You need to get a healer, right now, that looks _really_ bad—”

“You do it,” Chloe tells her, putting a hand on her cheek. “You always do it.”

“I—I don’t know if I have all the components, I wasn’t expecting...Chloe, come on, I’ll take you to the healer,” Rachel says, taking hold of Chloe’s hand and starting to step past her, but Chloe instead grabs the back of Rachel’s hair and kisses her, hard.

Rachel fights, for a moment. Of course she does. Anyone could see them doing this. But then...then something inside of Rachel must shift, because she relaxes into Chloe’s hold as her other hand circles around Rachel’s waist and pulls her close. Chloe’s probing with her tongue and it’s sliding across Rachel’s and everything is warm and soft. Rachel takes Chloe by the back of the neck and starts to walk backwards into her room, but then—

 _Crack._ Muffled in Rachel’s mouth as Chloe’s tongue presses against a canine, and then something solid is rolling around inside of Rachel’s mouth and Chloe’s tongue moves it into her own as she pulls away, tasting rust. Chloe’s stomach lurches and she quickly spits it out.

Rachel’s tooth leaves a small trail of blood as it bounces across the floor.

“What the fuck?!” Chloe asks as Rachel violently wrenches herself away, and as she does so a bundle of her hair detaches from her head and remains in Chloe’s other hand.

“Oh, shit,” Rachel whispers, backing away from Chloe, holding her hands up to her face. “Oh fuck, oh fuck...”

“Rachel!” Chloe pleads, grabbing at Rachel’s hand.

“Don’t touch me!” Rachel cries, taking her hand out of Chloe’s. But as Chloe’s fingers slide over her index finger, she hears a sickening sound, like tearing paper. Rachel’s nail comes off in her hand and Rachel lets out a whimper of pain, blood pouring from the ragged tip of her finger.

“Rachel, what the fuck is happening?” Chloe asks, her voice shaking.

“The Curse of Unbinding,” Rachel says, small and frightened. “Who would...how could they...” Blood dribbles from her mouth as her lip quivers. “I—Chloe, we both need the healer. Right now. But _don’t touch me._ If we reverse the curse I won’t lose anything else, but you can’t touch or grab _any_ part of me right now, okay?”

Chloe’s mouth is dry, pain throbbing in her arm. “Yeah. Yeah.”

“Come on, we need to go, now!” Rachel urges, running past Chloe. Chloe struggles to keep up on her injured ankle.

As Chloe limps behind, Victoria’s door opens beside her. Chloe’s skin seizes. She turns to stare, because that can’t be Victoria’s aura that’s setting her nerves on fire. Victoria has no aura, that’s why she’s so fucking creepy.

But the only one in Victoria’s room is Victoria, radiant as ever, hands clasped in front of her as she watches them head down the hall. “I thought you weren’t allowed on campus anymore, Chloe,” Victoria says, a strange expression twisting her mouth.

“Fuck you, Vic,” is all Chloe has time for, because Rachel’s disappearing around the corner and she has to run, painful as it is, to catch her.

But now that she’s felt Victoria’s aura, she can’t stop feeling it. It’s like a second sun, warming her flesh against her will, invading her pores.

She spares one look over her shoulder before she rounds the corner. Victoria’s smile. Triumphant.

 


	5. Acting Out

Victoria’s smiling because she knows she could have done worse.

She cast a reduced version of the spell, and she knows that. She suppressed her own aura, gave paltry offerings in order to weaken it. If she’d wanted, she could’ve made Rachel’s fingers and limbs and ears fall off, too, she could’ve turned her into a pile of disconnected limbs, blood, and organs.

But that wouldn’t be right. No, Rachel doesn’t deserve to die, not really. What she deserves is to understand how she’s made Victoria feel, all these months. She needs to know that Victoria could crush her at any time. That _Victoria_ holds the winning hand now.

She closes the door and puts her back against it, sighing with relief. She’s free. Once she discovered the way she had to feel, the way she had to ask, all the focus of her mind went not to Rachel but to the gods themselves for being able to grant her such power, such control, in a way she’s never felt before. She already knew so many rituals, and she performed them all, from the common to the rare, burning through the loads and loads of components she’d had stuffed away. Ward reinforcements for the town, glamours to remove the need for makeup, crystal-gazing to observe Rachel and finally discover some of her little secrets.

Rachel going into Jefferson’s office, before some more powerful spell intercepted the image. Rachel emerging from the Wilds, unscathed, and running down to fuck that greasy druid. Rachel casting some new spell on her feather. Rachel meeting up with Chloe in the refuse pile, and kissing her so carefully, so lovingly. Victoria’s seen it all. And she cursed Rachel with all of that knowledge in her heart, and the goddess of envy heard her loud and clear.

She wants to go down to that apothecary herself. She imagines it, waltzing right in and buying the things that would curse Frank’s own fuckbuddy. Would he ever know? Does Rachel know yet, and would she tell anyone? She’s playing with so much fire — literally, in Chloe’s case.

Victoria can’t wait to watch her finally burn up.

 

* * *

 

 

The next day, Victoria receives three visitors.

The first is David, who comes down the hall battering down one room at a time, giving Victoria plenty of time to disguise her father’s _Compendium of Curses_ with a simple concealment spell, giving it the appearance of an old textbook from last year. She knows what he’s going to ask before he arrives, mainly because he’s screaming it with every new door he opens.

She pretends to study while tapping her finger on the desk, waiting for the inevitable knock. Once it arrives, she takes her sweet time standing up and walking over to it, only opening it a tiny crack to give David one brown eye. He’s as ugly as ever, those burn scars twisting his mouth, raised red flesh from his right eye down to his chin. His uniform’s clean and shiny, though, and despite his windswept hair he looks _very_ official.

“A student was cursed yesterday,” David barks. “The headmaster has agreed that all student rooms are going to be searched for any materials that could’ve been used for it.”

“What, you mean the ones that burn up when the spell’s cast?” Victoria asks, rolling her eyes at him. “Nice plan, David. Do you even know how arcane magic works?”

“Don’t you talk back to me, missy,” David warns, hair starting to flow across his face as his energies escape him. “Open your door right this instant or I’ll make it open.”

“You screw up any of my things and this school will be hearing from my family,” Victoria shoots back. “You think Headmaster Wells wants an Oracle breathing down his neck?”

“That’s not my job to figure out. It’s my job to keep this school safe, so _open this door._ I’m not asking again.”

Victoria stiffens. How _dare_ he. Doesn’t he know who he’s messing with? The greatest witch there will ever be? Victoria will _crush_ this man.

“That’s it,” David says, blowing the door open and throwing Victoria back against her desk. She glowers at him while he looks up and down her bookshelf, rummages through her bags of components, and finds, of course, nothing that will point to the Curse of Unbinding. Victoria’s not stupid, she’s not Chloe, getting busted for skipping class every damn day. She knows what she’s doing, she always has, even when she thought she couldn’t be who she had to be. But now she can.

After concluding his search, David turns to her with an accusatory glare. “You give me any more lip and I’ll send you down to the headmaster myself,” he tells her.

Victoria folds her arms. “Are you finished?”

“Yes. For now. But I’m watching you.”

“We all know, David,” Victoria sighs. “You say that every day. Get out of here before I write my father and get you fired.”

David snorts. “Stuck-up rich kids, think you can intimidate me. We’ll see.” He walks out the door, slamming it behind him, and Victoria fumes. He touched pretty much everything in her room.

Let’s show him what the consequences are for that.

 

* * *

 

The second guest is Nathan, just after classes end and Victoria’s gathering up her things for the Guild meeting. He doesn’t even knock, simply coming in and immediately starting to pace the length of Victoria’s dorm, hands shaking at his sides.

“Something wrong, Nathan?” Victoria asks, putting down her satchel and placing her hands on her hips.

“Someone cursed Rachel,” Nathan says.

“Yeah, I know. Everybody knows,” Victoria sighs. “David searched everyone’s rooms, remember?”

“I know, I know, just...” Nathan swallows. “Why would anyone do that? She—”

Victoria scoffs. “Why _wouldn’t_ they? Who hasn’t she fucked with in this school?”

Nathan stops pacing and scowls at her. “I know you’ve got, like, this fuckin’ jealousy thing going on with her, but c’mon, Vic. I just—”

“You know she’s fucking Jefferson, right?” Saying it aloud fills Victoria with...something. Her chest swells. Finally, she has a secret that can hurt Rachel, just like Rachel once did. Rachel holds nothing over her anymore. No one does.

Nathan freezes in place. “You’re just saying that.”

“It’s true!” Victoria says giddily, watching his face. Even Nathan, even fucking Nathan, the one person she’d known and liked before Blackwell, had been enamored with Rachel fucking Amber. But she’s watching that drain away as she speaks, replaced with something like...like what Victoria’s been feeling for so long. He’s pale. “Just watch her some night with a crystal ball, you’ll see. He’s got wards on his office, but I know what they’re doing in there.”

Nathan swallows. “That—that’s bullshit, Vic. Don’t say stuff like that.”

She raises her eyebrows at him. “Nathan, come on. I don’t bullshit you.”

Okay, this she didn’t expect. He’s clenching his fists at his sides and muttering something under his breath, something that sounds like, “I’m supposed to be the one.”

“What’d you say?” Victoria asks, stepping closer. “Come on. You had to know she was a bitch. Just ‘cuz she’s pretty and talks nice to you doesn’t mean she likes you.”

“I—I need to go. Fucking...” Nathan growls. “See you later, Vic.”

Nathan doesn’t show up at the meeting. Neither does Rachel. Without them, Victoria is the one who people look to for instruction, and it seems so natural, so easy. She makes plans for the next meeting, a ritual to aid the town’s farms that requires seven people to complete, and the headmaster will be more than willing to give them the supplies. The Vortex Guild belongs to her, in that moment. She will make it great, greater than it’s ever been, more than just a gathering of the best-connected and best-liked Blackwell students, but a real force to be reckoned with.

 

* * *

 

Rachel shows up to Victoria’s room just after sunset.

She knocks once and Victoria immediately knows who it is. She opens the door and this time, Rachel’s standing right in front of it. Her perfect golden hair has thinned, her eyes are red and tired, one finger bandaged and bloody. Just enough warning.

She hesitates before stepping inside, cowering under Victoria’s cold glare. _How does it feel?_ Victoria wants to ask, but the door has to be closed first. Regardless of what else happens here tonight, she still doesn’t want every part of the truth to be known.

“Close the door,” Victoria finally orders as Rachel tries to bore into her soul with those eyes. Rachel obeys, then turns back.

“I know it was you,” Rachel says quietly, looking down at her hands. “No one else would have access to that curse.”

“And this is why you always get _such_ high marks in class,” Victoria says, a laugh in her voice. “So _smart._ Or, wait, is that because you’re screwing the professor?” 

Rachel’s eyes go wide. “H-how much do you know?”

“Enough.” Victoria circles Rachel, resisting the urge to touch her. No. That’s exactly what Rachel wants, to be desired, so badly, so clearly. Victoria’s mouth twists. “You’re never coming back in here again. Do you hear me?”

“W-wait, Victoria—”

“No more. All that stuff you’ve been ‘borrowing’? It’s mine now. You have _nothing_ on me. I’m gonna let you fucking flounder on your own,” Victoria hisses.

“Tori!” Rachel pleads, turning around and touching Victoria’s shoulder. “S-so you can cast spells, that doesn’t mean we have to — that I don’t still want to...” She steps closer to Victoria, and as she speaks, Victoria can see the gap in her teeth. Tarnished beauty.

Victoria, for just a moment, is struck by the idea. Rachel still wants to be with her, even if there’s nothing hanging over Victoria’s head? She thinks that can happen, thinks that she’s, what, still gonna get her study materials without blackmail? Does she think that Victoria actually _likes_ Rachel?

Victoria doesn’t. She can’t like Rachel. She won’t like Rachel, she won’t fall under her spell like everyone else at this idiotic school. She’s free of that. Those eyes don’t do anything to her, they don’t fill her chest with chills or make her feel sick for what she’s done, what she wants to do. There is nothing but triumph in Victoria as she pushes Rachel away.

“I said, you don’t come back in here. Not ever again. If you talk to me again, if you show up to a Vortex meeting, I’ve got a whole book of curses just waiting to be cast,” Victoria warns. “I’m in charge now, Rachel. Go back to your sad sorcerers and your loser druids. And I might just report Jefferson to the headmaster, too, now that I’m thinking about it,” Victoria adds, putting a finger on her chin. “You haven’t earned a single fucking thing in this school. All you’ve done is twist everyone around your finger and get born with god-voices in your head. Not anymore.”

“Tori—”

“My name is Victoria.” She grits her teeth. Rachel will call her by her real name. Rachel will call her whatever she wants to be called.

“Victoria, please,” Rachel tries again. “S-so we don’t have to be friends, but we don’t have to be enemies, either. Just—I’ll leave you alone, I won’t bother you again, just don’t—not yet. You can’t report him yet.”

Victoria narrows her eyes. “Yet? So, what, planning to throw him away once you’re done with him?”

“Victoria, you have _no idea_ what’s going on, what I’m trying to do—”

“Yeah, I know. You made pretty fucking sure of that. So I’m thinking, no matter what plans of yours I screw up, it’s kind of on you.” Victoria smiles. “Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t. Depends on how I’m feeling. See how it feels?” she asks. “See what it’s like, when someone’s holding shit like that over your head?”

Rachel’s eyes fill with tears. Victoria scowls. “Don’t you try that shit on me,” Victoria spits. “Cry all you fucking want. You’re nothing anymore, Rachel. I’m done with you. This school is done with you. Go back wherever you came from and tell them you flunked out, because without me, you will.”

“I’m sorry, Victoria,” Rachel says, hanging her head. “I—I never wanted to hurt you. I just—”

“I don’t care what you wanted anymore. Get out. And give me back my book.”

Rachel puts a hand over her face. “I’m sorry,” she repeats. “I will. I’ll go.”

“That’s what I thought.”

As Rachel leaves, shoulders slumped and head heavy, something inside of Victoria squirms. She wants to squash it down, this feeling in her stomach. Rachel deserves this. Victoria _hates_ her. There’s nothing else. There never was anything else between them. It was always this, always going to be this.

Even if Rachel did give her the tools to finally cast a spell. Even if Rachel called her pretty and said she wanted Victoria. Even if Rachel said, “You’re going to be great someday.”

Victoria _is_ going to be great. And she doesn’t need or want Rachel. That’s what she tells herself, as she sits down at her desk and prepares another spell. Everyone in this school will know how great she is, soon enough.

And no one will remember Rachel.


	6. The Blackest of Hours

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _What a fantastic lie_   
>  _That the blackest of hours has no witness_

Rachel’s running out of time.

She knows Victoria well enough to know that. To know that Victoria won’t stay satisfied for long. That she won’t stop until Rachel’s gone for good, in whatever way she deems appropriate — dead or expelled or anything else.

She always knew Victoria had a strong personality. A need to rise above. A need to be the only one on top. They’d never sat down and talked, really talked, not the way Rachel had always wanted to do, not the way Rachel and Chloe would, out there in the magical refuse. Victoria threw off her every attempt to really get close. Rachel’s fault. Rachel approached her the wrong way, approached her on Victoria’s own level instead of charming her, acted like a queen instead of a friend.

But pieces of the truth slipped through, in quiet curses, in shaking fingers, in her body when she submitted to Rachel. Knowledge of Victor and Maribeth Chase, power couple of the Warded Witchdom. The Oracle and the Mistress of Rituals. Not quite the Prescotts, but the expectations were just as high, and Victoria had come to Blackwell with nearly nothing. She fought so hard to meet their demands, despite being born without a god’s touch on her blood. It’s what makes her beautiful. What makes them so much alike.

Despite everything, Rachel can’t help but feel a little proud of her as she leaves Victoria’s room and sets her back against the door. Victoria’s going to be incredible. The trick is getting out of here before she realizes just how incredible she already is.

She wanted more time. She wanted to stay here and fix everything she’s broken, set everything right before she ran off for Citadel. But as usual, the universe is propelling her forward, and she’s got to leave nothing but heartache in her wake. Hopefully, the next time she and Victoria meet, Victoria can forgive her.

First, Mark.

She practically runs to his office, but the news will be out soon, anyway. Victoria won’t keep that to herself. The time for discretion is coming to an end, and at that thought, Rachel actually feels a little relief. The pain of all this lying, all this sneaking around, that will be over soon too. Blackwell, and everything she’s done here, is almost over. Thank all the gods.

She throws the door open and marches inside, startling Mark behind his desk. He raises an eyebrow.

“In a hurry tonight, Rachel?” he asks, standing up and stretching. “You know, I really should finish grading. Your visits are taking up quite a lot of my time...”

“I need everything you can give me,” Rachel says.

“Is that so.” Mark approaches her, looking down at her intensely. Rachel swears she can see through his glamour, just a little bit, the candlelight reflecting in the blank black space of his eyes. “You’re ready to take the leap, then? Give up your constant kowtowing to the gods?”

“Not what I mean,” Rachel clarifies. “I need a _lot_ of power, that’s all.”

He frowns. “Very well, I suppose. But be careful. If you can’t contain it, and you don’t willingly submit, you’ll turn into something very nasty indeed, and I don’t need the faculty questioning why our star pupil is suddenly sprouting claws and extra teeth.”

“I know what I’m doing,” Rachel says, gritting her teeth.

“Quite the attitude tonight, missy,” Mark admonishes. “But fine. Come on.”

His sharp fingernails dig into her hand as they walk out to the Wilds, to the barn, to the cellar. He closes his eyes for a moment, and Rachel stares at the green veins running in his skin, the gaunt cheekbones, everything that marks him as a master of this corrupted wasteland. She will never look like that. No matter what, she will not give in like he has, will not allow her desires to ever override her judgement.

Not again, anyway.

The red tendrils crawl down her throat. Every limb is full to bursting with Mark’s drawn power. She feels ready to explode, and she can hear it now, whispering in her mind. The same language she heard, so long ago, when she touched a sorcerer’s focus-mark for the first time, but deeper, guttural, and whispering not of a longing to be whole but merely hunger.

That language. Not quite the one that the new gods whisper to her in, but it’s close, and she’s always been able to understand it. She’s looked, for so long, to see if anyone else does, read through Victoria’s books and reports and everything, everything her parents have access to. Only vague mentions. But always reinforced with, “The Old Ones are dead. Sorcerers are just the last wisps of their spirits reaching out from beyond the grave, touching souls at random and granting them primal power.”

But they aren’t dead. Not totally. If they can be heard, then someone must be able to speak to them, too. And Rachel will be the one to try.

She’s vibrating as Mark lowers his arms, as he steps closer to her. He hisses under his breath as he runs a hand along her shoulder. “Listen to that,” he murmurs. “They talk to you too, don’t they?”

She looks up at him, eyes wide. “You mean...”

“I can’t understand them. But I can always hear them.” He squints. “Can you understand them, shaper?”

Rachel nods, and Mark steps back. “Incredible. No shaper’s ever become a warlock, not that I’ve ever heard of...the power is so close within your grasp. You could bring back an Old One, if you tried.” He chuckles to himself, putting a hand on his chin. “This changes everything. I’m sure you already knew I was planning to kill you, to feed. But you’re too special for that, I think.”

Rachel feels chills run down her back. Apparently Mark’s done lying, done hiding, as much as she is. “I knew,” she confirms, stepping back despite knowing it won’t make her any safer. “I’m not changing myself.”

“That’s what I said, when the fur started growing,” Mark replies, flashing his sharp teeth at her. “But then I felt it. The madness, seeping into me. The more I fought, the more it tore my mind to shreds. The only way out was to let them in. Someday, you’ll do the same. But for now...” He steps closer again, putting a hand on her neck. “You are irresistible, Rachel.”

Rachel squeezes her eyes shut as he bends down, pushing her back into the wall. She would resist, if she didn’t know that he could change his mind in an instant and flay her alive. This should be her opportunity, to push back, to stop him, to tell him all of the truth. But she’s so close, and she can’t die, not now, not when everything’s about to finally, finally end.

So she does what she’s always done. She pretends. So that he’ll believe his own bullshit, he’ll believe she’s in love with him, so he won’t suspect her when she runs.

She leaves him there as he reclines on his bed of vines, and once she’s out of his sight, she allows herself to shudder.

Next, Frank.

She gives him a long, long hug when she steps into the Bower. Because he’s done so much for her, and he’s so...so sad, and he’s special and he’s going to _hate_ her when she leaves. So she holds him and lets herself really love him, despite the way the voices in her head are screaming at their contact with the charm around his neck.

“You okay, Rach?” he asks, rubbing her back.

She lets loose a noncommittal sort of noise into his neck, holding him tighter because _fuck_ the corruption she’s carrying around inside of her, _fuck_ warlocks, _fuck_ her entire ridiculous web of power and knowledge. Tonight it all ends. Tonight she changes the world, and tonight...

Tonight she changes Chloe.

She releases Frank and sighs, remembering the one person she can take with her. The one person she’s been careful with, during all of this, all these years in Arcadia. The girl she loves so much that she couldn’t bring herself to kiss her for so long. Focus on that, now. Not on Victoria, not on Frank, definitely not on Mark.

She breathes. “Frank, I need the components for that big spell I’ve been preparing. All the stuff from the deepest parts of the Wilds. Do you have it all?”

“Uh, yeah.” He steps behind the counter and reaches beneath it. “You’re lucky. Last one came in today. The obsidian chunk from the Blasted Lands, right?”

Rachel nods as he sets the item on the counter. “Yeah, and then the vine cuttings, the wingbone from the Windswept Plains, and the bloodgrass ink.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then the big gems, right? Sapphire, ruby, emerald, diamond.” He sets each gem on the counter as he lists them off, each one hitting with a distinct _clack._ “Man, Rach, this stuff actually set me back a lot...”

Right. Gods, she’s been awful to Frank. She reaches into her satchel and takes out her coinpurse, dumping out every single coin she has onto the counter. “It’s all yours,” she says as Frank gawks. “I owe you a lot, anyway.”

“Holy—Rachel, you don’t have to—”

“And I need...” Rachel wracks her brain, thinking, and, yes. They have to leave tomorrow, if not sooner. No more lies. No more holding back. “Two charms.”

“I—I still got your bracelet, but the caravan bought me out today. I’ll need another day to make a new one for you.”

“I’ll come by tomorrow morning,” Rachel promises. “I need them.”

“You, uh...” Frank scratches the back of his neck. “You’re gonna tell me what you did when you come back, right?”

“Depends on if it works. I might be too embarrassed if it didn’t,” Rachel says, trying to smile at him. “I love you, Frank. Thank you so much.”

He looks a bit taken aback. But his, “I love you too,” is genuine, and she hugs him again, and kisses him fiercely, because he deserves that after all she’s taken from him.

And now, Chloe.

She knows where Chloe’s house is. She used to go there a lot, before David started to really hate her. It’s not too far from Frank’s shop. It’s not a pretty picture, these days. The wood’s practically rotting off the sides of the house, and it hasn’t been painted since William’s death, and random scorch marks marr the front wall. But Chloe’s window is lit up, flickering light filling it. Rachel reaches into the road and finds an appropriately-sized stone and throws it straight through the window, then winces when she hears a “Fuck!” from inside.

Chloe appears at the window, hands clenching the sill, angry eyes scanning the street until they settle on Rachel. Her expression turns to confusion as Rachel tries to wave her down.

“What the fuck?” she mouths, and Rachel just beckons her out of the window, so out she goes. She lands with a grunt on her still-tender ankle, but Rachel’s just glad to see that no new burns have appeared on her skin. Rachel grabs her hand and tugs her down the road.

“Uh, Rach, not that I’m not into the whole moonlight-adventure thing, but weren’t you cursed yesterday? Shouldn’t you be, I dunno, recovering?” Chloe asks, rubbing her arm. “You don’t have to come see me.”

“I’ve got something for you,” Rachel replies as they start down the path to their shack.

“Rachel, like...” Chloe looks down at her feet. “I know it takes work to make spells. I’m not dumb. You don’t need to keep wasting all that on me.”

“You’re the only one worth doing it for,” Rachel says, and she surprises herself at how right that feels to say. Somewhere along the line, this went from Rachel’s own ambition to...to that, and something more. She squeezes Chloe’s hand. Maybe now is the time, when everything’s about to end, to let herself feel.

She can feel the heat building beneath Chloe’s skin, and smiles. It’s so flattering, the way she burns up when Rachel shows her affection. It’s so cute, how unpracticed and uncontrolled she is. It’s so wonderful. Chloe’s so...Chloe. So much herself. Rachel finds herself just a bit envious.

“So, what’s the plan?” Chloe asks after a few more minutes of walking in the dark.

“I said I wanted to change you. I’m going to do it.”

“Holy shit, really? You think you can?”

“I’m gonna try.” The tentacles of energy wriggle in her limbs. “I’ve had this idea for so long, Chloe, you have no idea. And no one else has ever done it. No one’s tried to mess with primal magic like this, it’s not the gods’ domain. I’m going to talk to the Old Ones.”

“Holy fuck, Rachel. You — for _me?_ ”

“You deserve it.” _You deserve so much more,_ Rachel thinks. _So much more than this life you’re living. So much more than a dead father, than a distant mother, than a lost friend and a cruel stepfather. You deserve so much power so you can be free. So we can both be free._

“You really are crazy, Rachel.” But as she says that, Chloe’s pulling at Rachel’s hand, twirling her around. And now, kissing her, and it’s precisely as wonderful as it was in the hallway before Rachel’s tooth fell out of her mouth. Feeling Chloe’s intense need for Rachel, her passion, her desperation to be loved, it fuels something deep within Rachel, past the corrupted power she’s holding in. And she needs to tell Chloe.

“I love you,” she whispers, holding her close under the moonlight.

They kiss for quite some time before Rachel starts leading Chloe back down the forest path to their home, their space, the junk they’ve made their own. Chloe’s silent, but smiling, for the entire long walk.

As they step into the shack, Rachel orders Chloe to lie down, then starts scrubbing away the old runes. Listening to the voices in her head, she gets flashes, and she knows what she needs to write in their place, words not spoken aloud for hundreds of years. Chloe’s flexing her fingers, waiting.

“Okay,” Rachel breathes, standing up and taking the gems out of her bag. “Hold still.”

She places the ruby in Chloe’s right hand, the sapphire in her left, and tells her to squeeze tight. Then the emerald on her stomach, the diamond just below her feet. She breathes, then she draws out the rest of the components. The wingbone goes beneath the diamond. The obsidian under her right arm. The vine cuttings surrounding her left hand. Then, she pulls up Chloe’s right sleeve and sits beside her, looking at that once-meaningless symbol, her focus-mark, and right now it’s a name. The name of the Old One who commanded fire.

She dips her quill into the inkwell, into the substance made from the bloodgrass that grows beneath the ribs of the Old One who shaped mountains, and she writes her name on Chloe’s arm, extending out of the other rune. Then the wind-maker, the rain-dancer, forming a four-pointed star. All of them. And suddenly, she hears new whispers.

**_Bring us back._ **

**_Purge our sins._ **

**_Make us whole._ **

**_Let us work._ **

The same pleading she hears whenever she touches a focus-mark. They see her, now. They know what she’s doing. They’re _forming,_ as she listens, those old impulses, those broken pieces of the great titans that shaped the world itself. They’re turning into something with a consciousness as she calls to them.

“Rachel?” Chloe whispers as Rachel closes her eyes and tries to find the words.

 _I offer the remains of your own bodies to you,_ she says. _I offer you my devotion, my love, without the corruption of your sins. Take this power within me and know that you can cleanse it. Know that it will give you the strength to speak again._

She gasps with relief as the insistent presence within her starts to fade, as the hateful hissing in her mind begins to calm.

_Now I ask that you reach out and grant your powers to this one, this unassuming, damaged girl. Now I ask that you see my offerings and prepare to consume them, and that when you do, you give her power that even you yourselves never knew, a breadth of control you yourselves could never reach. Combine your strengths. Become something new. Become the God of the Elements._

As she asks, she can feel the four voices merging into one in her mind. They reply. **_Shaper of rituals. Our children have blessed you. You do not serve only them? You seek us?_**

_I do._

_**You offer these things to us? You offer us a new life?** _

_I do._

_**We will not walk the earth again.** _

_No. Your bodies are dead._

**_As our children, then. As the new gods do, we shall not cling to our corpses any longer. The corruption will continue to fester as it has. But we shall not._ **

Rachel shakes. She didn’t know she could do this, but she’s talking the oldest gods into merging into one being. They’re _listening._ After all these centuries, they are together, after the war between them that corrupted all their arcane energies. _Our children,_ they said. So the gods were descended from the Old Ones? Did they once have bodies, too? How did they ascend on their own?

But these are questions to pose at Citadel. Now, she must listen.

_**Shaper of rituals. Speak to us aloud, and give us these offerings, and we shall be made whole as a new being. May our memories depart us when we do.** _

_So this will work only once?_

_**No. When you speak, you will bind us to forever listen, whether we remember in our new mind or not.** _

Rachel breathes a sigh of relief. Her spell will change the world. No warlock will be able to stand up to the new sorcerers, and Chloe will be the first. Warded Witchdom will be safe.

Chloe will be safe.

“Rachel?” Chloe asks again, shifting to look at her. “You okay?”

“I’m ready,” Rachel whispers. _Tell me what to say._

She positions herself between Chloe’s legs, putting her hands on her knees. And she speaks the language of the Old Ones.

The gems crack open and spill their power into the ether. The obsidian fizzles away. The wingbone turns to dust and swirls into a cyclone that envelops the circle. The vine cuttings bloom with beautiful pink flowers, before they shrivel into black nothingness, and then burn up.

And then Chloe screams.

Rachel doesn’t stop chanting, but she opens her eyes and stares. The new focus mark steams and smokes and crackles, as the ink burns straight into Chloe’s skin. Chloe thrashes back and forth, covering the mark, crying in pain, and Rachel wants to stop but she can’t, she can’t, she’s so close.

And then there’s a flash. The bone-dust falls to the ground like snow. All is quiet but for Chloe’s whimpers of pain.

“Chloe,” Rachel whispers, crawling over and taking her right hand. “Are you okay?”

Chloe uncovers the mark, staring. And now it really is etched into her skin. The name of the new god, master of the four elements.

“What did you do?” Chloe asks, blinking away tears. “I—I feel...”

“Did it work? Can you—”

“I can feel the blood running through your body,” Chloe whispers. “I—I can feel the water in the air around us, I can feel the wind in the clouds, what the fuck, _Rachel,_ what did you _do?_ ”

“You’re the first four-element sorcerer,” Rachel says. “I—I think. Try.”

“Try _what?_ ”

“Use something that’s not fire.”

Chloe sits up, raising her hand into the air, twirling her fingers around. The dust from the bone starts to fly up from the ground, swirling around her hand, weaving between her fingers. And Chloe starts _laughing._

“Rachel!” she cries, hugging Rachel close and rocking back and forth. “Rachel, you are—how the hell—you’re...” She lets out a sob, and then more. Rachel kisses her tears away, and then she kisses her more, and more, and more. And then she picks Chloe up just to push her back down on the bed.

Getting Chloe out of her clothes now, it’s so different than with Victoria, or even Frank. Chloe’s so nervous underneath her, so full of an emotional high that Rachel can’t even guess at, and she’s constantly reaching up and giving Rachel little pecks, and fumbling with her dress. There’s no practice in her, just lust and love, and Rachel is intoxicated with just how _Chloe_ she is as they make love.

The bed’s hard beneath them, and there are no covers, and it should be freezing as they lie naked beside each other. But Chloe’s keeping them both warm, showing a control over her powers that Rachel’s rarely seen. And she’s so completely perfect, panting out puffs of air into the night, her hand to her forehead as she rides out the last of the waves Rachel set in motion.

“Holy fuck,” she murmurs. “Rachel.”

“Chloe,” Rachel whispers in her ear, before giving her a light kiss on the cheek. “I told you you’d be great someday.”

Chloe ponders that for a while as Rachel runs a hand up and down her arm. “So...what the fuck do we do now that I’m a demigod?”

“We’re getting out of Arcadia,” Rachel answers.

“Fuck _yes!_ ” Chloe shouts, punching the air and then collapsing in a fit of giggles. “When?”

“Tomorrow. I’ll get us some charms and we’re running off straight to Citadel.”

“Tomorrow,” Chloe repeats. “Yeah. Okay. One more day in Hell.”

“First thing in the morning. Pack your stuff.”

Chloe rolls over and pins Rachel to the bed, and then they’re done talking again for a bit.

“Citadel,” Rachel mutters once they’re both satisfied, again. “We’re going to Citadel to show you off to the Consortium, and then we’ll never have to worry about anything ever again. We’ll be legends.” _And no more lies. No more warlocks. Nothing but me and you, and I’ll love you and just you,_ she says to herself.

“Damn right we are.”

Rachel stands up, despite the ache in her. This really isn’t a great place to sleep. “Tomorrow,” she repeats, pulling Chloe up and giving her another kiss. “Just you and me.”

“You got it.” Chloe’s grin is infectious.

They dress, and they share a long hug when they have to part ways. But it won’t last long, that’s what Rachel tells herself as she heads back to her dorm.

But when she opens the door, she finds that someone’s already in there.

“You,” Nathan says, standing up from her desk and reaching out a hand. A transparent red tentacle reaches out from his fingers and grabs Rachel around the waist, another slamming the door shut behind her.

“N—Nathan!” Rachel squeaks as he pulls her up to his face, into his snarl of rage.

“I was supposed to be the one,” he spits. “Me! He was going to make _me_ like him, we’d own this shitty school!”

“Nathan, please, don’t—”

“But I can do it without him,” Nathan says, a nervous laugh edging into his voice. “And I can take you out at the same time, and then no one, _no one_ will control me, not anymore.” 

“You don’t want to be like him, he’s a monster—”

“Then what are you, huh?” Nathan asks.

Rachel has no answer.

“He taught me a couple of tricks,” Nathan mutters. “All I have to do now is feed.”

He puts his hand to her head. With a burst of power, Rachel collapses into his waiting arms.


	7. Witness

Chloe stops in front of her house, pondering ways in even as her skin buzzes with phantoms of Rachel’s touch, as her mind swims with memories of Rachel’s promises. Tomorrow. _Tomorrow._ She’ll be free, free of David, free of every single bond she has to this fucking town. A whole new life. A life of wealth, most likely, a life of importance. A life with Rachel.

 _I love you._ How long Chloe’s waited to hear those words. She’s lighter than the air.

Oh, shit, she actually _is_ lighter than the air. She’s sort of hovering an inch off the ground as she closes her eyes and tries to contain her grin. She looks down and feels the air whirling around her.

David flies to work most of the time. Perks of being an air-focus. Well, if Chloe’s the fucking master of all four elements, time to try a few of them out. She breathes and focuses on that breath, feeling the way it bends the currents of the atmosphere. This expanded perception’s gonna take some getting used to.

She wobbles upward towards her window, grabbing the sill as soon as she’s in range because this is actually sort of fucking terrifying, being...not on the ground. She feels her full weight on her arms as soon as she takes hold, and with a grunt, manages to pull herself up and straight into David’s face.

She drops.

“What the _fuck,_ ” she groans from her back, staring up at David’s enraged scowl. With a wave of his hand, Chloe’s flying again, but this time she’s not in control of it, levitating up while still prone until she’s back at eye-level with David.

“What the hell did you _do?_ ” he growls as Chloe squirms in his grip.

“What are you—” And then, Chloe sees. He’s bare-chested, the way he sleeps, but there are these disgusting green blisters pockmarking his flesh, shining in the thin moonlight, weeping small clear trails down his body.

“You. You and that Rachel girl, I know you snuck out tonight, is this what you’ve been cooking up?” David’s voice is so much calmer than his usual rages, and that puts a chill in Chloe’s heart. “A curse just for me, huh?”

“David, I don’t — we didn’t fucking curse you!” Chloe says, getting a hold over the air around her and managing to get herself into a standing position, floating outside the window. “Like Rachel’s gonna waste her shaping on your pathetic ass, honestly.”

Well, that was the wrong thing to say. David pulls her in through the window, knocking her forehead against the top of it as she flies in and lands face-first on her bed. She puts her hands to her scalp and hisses, feeling the fire beginning to swell in her heart.

“She cursed herself, didn’t she?” David asks, stepping forward. “To try and throw me off, but I know better than that, you punk kids can’t fool me.”

“Holy shit, you’re stupid,” Chloe mutters, turning over on her back. “Yeah, sure, she’ll just lose a fucking tooth to ‘throw you off’. Do you think she’s some fucking evil mastermind? We’re _kids._ I’m not the fucking sorcerer who fucked up your face! Get it through your thick-ass skull!”

David’s face twists in rage. “You don’t have the right to bring that up—”

Chloe’s door opens, letting in a frazzled-looking woman, her blond hair a shambles around her shoulders. “What in the hell are you two screaming about?” Joyce asks, looking from one to the other. Her eyes widen as she sees David’s sores. “David! What happened to you?”

“She cursed me!” David accuses, pointing a finger at Chloe and blowing a gust in her direction in the process. “I’m telling you, Joyce, she and that Vortex girl—”

“I flunked out of Intro to Rituals, remember?” Chloe reminds him. “And Rachel barely even _knows_ you. You probably pissed off somebody at Blackwell because you keep running around accusing everyone of shit like this.”

“Chloe, that’s no way to speak to him,” Joyce says, frowning. “But, David, I don’t think Chloe would—”

“I _know_ she snuck out tonight. And I know all about your little _indiscretions_ , Chloe,” David says lowly. “I’m packing you off to the Primal Core first thing tomorrow. You need to learn some discipline.”

“David! You can’t say that about my child without—” Joyce begins, but Chloe’s starting to smoulder.

“How would you _know,_ ” she asks, flatly.

“I know,” David says, but Chloe’s already spotted it. On her desk. With a lock of blue hair underneath it.

Chloe leaps to her feet, soaring across the room and snatching the crystal ball from the desk. M.C., carved into the base, just like before, before she lost it. No. Before he _took it._

“All this time,” she begins, hair flying around her face as she stares into David’s suddenly-fearful eyes. “You had it. How long have you been _watching_ me?” She feels sick. Ready to throw up at the thought of David getting a gods-eye view of the moments with Rachel that she’d thought were so sacred and private, ready to fucking kill him and show him what Rachel really did for her. He’s stepping back, holding his hands up, his face a mask of confused terror.

“You—Chloe.” He puts a protective arm around Joyce. “I—I was trying to protect you, if I don’t know what you’re doing—”

“Did you see me do _this?_ ” Chloe asks, levitating herself above the floor.

“No,” David admits as Joyce steps aside and stares at Chloe.

“Chloe, what—how are you—” she stammers.

“Rachel expanded my focus,” Chloe explains. “So I could protect myself. From _creeps_ like you.”

“That’s impossible,” David whispers.

“Oh, is it, David?” Chloe throws a hand out and presses David to the wall with a stream of wind, Joyce running to the side to avoid the blast. “Sure doesn’t look like it right now.”

“C-Chloe, don’t hurt him,” Joyce begs. “He—I can’t believe he stole that from you, but don’t—”

“I don’t even fucking care anymore.”

Chloe glances at the crystal ball. She thinks of the years she’s spent mourning its loss, blaming herself, wishing she would’ve just started the connection before it went away. She could do it now. She could try to talk to Max. Her old friend, from an old life.

She smashes it to the floor and watches it shatter.

Joyce and David both gawk as Chloe lowers herself to the floor. “I’m going to Citadel with Rachel,” Chloe says, feeling a swell in her chest as she says those words aloud and knows how true they are. “I’m the world’s most powerful sorceress, and she’s the best shaper. We’re better than you. Better than this fucking town. Get out of my way.”

David swallows, trying to step forward. “I—I’ll report this to the guard, you can’t just _leave_ —”

“We’re going right through the Wilds. And you can’t stop me.” Chloe stops blasting him with her wind, and instead ignites her fists. “I’m staying with her tonight. Enjoy your curse. Get out of my room.”

“Chloe, don’t leave, please,” Joyce says, rushing forward and trying to take Chloe by the shoulders. “Whatever we did—”

“It’s way too late for that.” Chloe raises a burning fist and Joyce backs away, trailing blood from the shards of crystal embedded in her bare feet. Chloe twirls her fingers and pushes both of them out the door, then feels the particles suspended in the atmosphere around her and closes her fists. A streak of water materializes before her, and she sends it straight at the doorknob, envelops it, and then tells the water to freeze.

She surveys the scene around her, still floating above the wreckage of the crystal ball as Joyce pleads from beyond the door. _I don’t care_ , she tells herself as she grabs a satchel and starts stuffing clothes into it. _Mom can handle step-dick on her own. She’s the one who married him. She can fucking rot here with her own damned choices._

 _Rachel, Rachel, Rachel, Rachel,_ she repeats in her mind as she slings the satchel over her shoulder and jumps out the window, then ascends. She looks over the pine forests of Arcadia, and she can see the faint shimmering of the warded dome just above her head, where a great bat soars above, catching locusts the size of her fist. She looks for Blackwell, and finds it, and holds her hands out behind her, projecting flame to propel herself towards it.

It’s strange, how natural all this feels. How easy it is to warp the elements to her design. She really is great, like Rachel said. She is the greatest in the world, and Rachel loves her.

She lets herself down just outside the dorms, barging in and heading straight for Rachel’s room.

But the door’s hanging open.

And the room is empty.

She stalks inside, flipping open the covers, ransacking the room, looking for any sign, but she’s _not here._ Then where? Where is she?

Her fingers smoke as she sits down on the edge of Rachel’s bed and clutches her forehead. She has to be here. She has to be here and love Chloe and let her stay here until tomorrow when it’ll be just the two of them, just Rachel and Chloe forever.

A door opens down the hall. Victoria, stepping out into Chloe’s sight in her nightgown, chalk dust white on her fingers under the everburning torches.

“Hey!” Chloe shouts, and Victoria jumps before their eyes meet and her face settles into a familiar scowl.

“Chloe, you’re not allowed on campus,” Victoria reminds her, putting her hands on her hips. “Do I need to tell David about this?”

“Go right the fuck ahead. He probably knows already anyway. Not that he can stop me.” Chloe stands up and heads for Victoria, who takes just one step back before apparently deciding to hold her ground. Chloe pokes a finger into her chest. “Where’s Rachel?”

“How should I know?” Victoria scoffs. “Probably off fucking the professor again. Or that greasy apothecary.”

Chloe shoves her against the wall with one hand and puts her other fist in Victoria’s face, setting it ablaze. “You don’t have a whole lot of survival instinct, huh, Chase?” Chloe asks, staring into her eyes. “Don’t talk shit about Rachel in front of me ever again.”

“It’s not ‘shit,’” Victoria replies, her voice wavering as she tries to keep it level. “She’s been fucking Jefferson for I don’t know how long. And where do you think she got all those components, huh?”

Chloe lets loose a guttural growl and restricts the fire to just one finger, trailing it just under Victoria’s hairline. “Maybe start with your hair,” she mutters. “That’d teach you to try to fuck with me.”

Victoria’s eyes are widening, despite her attempts at confidence. “Just ask them sometime,” Victoria suggests. “Hell, she even fucked _me._ She thought she could control me, just like she’s playing you, and Frank, and Jefferson. But that curse shut her the fuck up real quick.”

Chloe’s chest clenches. _She’s lying. She’s bullshitting me. No way. Rachel loves me. No one else. Teach her a fucking lesson._

She presses the finger into Victoria’s cheek, and she screams — and then something else screams.

Chloe stumbles back from Victoria, clutching at her ears as a voice, no, _Rachel’s voice,_ pierces her head. She can feel it vibrating from some central point, rattling her bones, churning her blood in her veins. Chloe can only faintly hear Victoria’s gasps of pain as she falls to the floor, trying anything to block out that sound, this insane feeling, like an aura but so much stronger, so much sadder, and so much angrier.

And then the screaming stops. And Chloe feels...an absence. A chill, where none existed before, a loss of some great blanket of comfort—

Oh, fuck.

“The wards,” Chloe whispers.

“What?! What the hell is going on?” Victoria shouts.

“The fucking wards are down.”

Victoria goes pale. “How would you—”

“Primal sense, remember? I — _shit._ That has to be it. Oh, gods, Rachel,” Chloe mutters, standing up on shaking legs. She can still feel the eddies and cyclones in the flow of magic, all radiating out from somewhere. She has to follow it. She has to find out why Rachel screamed.

She has to find Rachel.

Without another word to Victoria, Chloe dashes out of the building and into the night, following the disturbances that itch at her skin, the aftershocks of Rachel’s cry.

Into the Wilds.

She steps on the shriveled corpses of the vines, but she can already feel them beginning to stir, new growths at the edge of the crater Rachel’s made in magic itself. And then she hears something, just as she sees a rotting barn in a clearing.

Long, high howls. A werewolf pack, on the hunt. Headed for Arcadia. They know it’s unprotected.

Rachel will know what to do. Rachel will fix it.

Chloe blasts open the doors and she can feel it now, humming beneath her feet, the epicenter of the explosion. She sends out a wave of flame, lighting up the barn, and in the softly flickering light she spies the trapdoor and runs for it, dropping down the ladder into a dark space filled with shouting.

A fading red glow illuminates Rachel, lying still on the floor between two figures with their hands on each other’s throats. They barely even look human, fur sprouting in random patches through their clothes, jaws elongated and filled with sharp teeth and slathering tongues, claws spilling green blood onto the floor as they separate and start to slash at one another. But they’re not gone yet. Chloe knows them.

Jefferson. Prescott. The sickness of their auras fills this space, no longer under control but consuming their very souls. And those monstrous mouths can still speak, because Jefferson’s shouting, “You _imbecile!_ You fucked everything up! You should’ve known she’d have contingencies! Look at us!”

“You should’ve told me!” Nathan screams back, spittle flying from his face as he rears forward and slashes at Jefferson. “I was supposed to be the one! Me! Your apprentice!”

“I only kept you around because you’d take the fall,” Jefferson snarls. “Your rich family was protection. She was special, and now _look_ at what you’ve done! We’re going to change, and it’s your fault!”

Jefferson launches himself on top of Nathan, and the two turn into a shrieking pile of teeth and claws, Chloe staring, gaping at these two corrupted fiends fighting over Rachel. _Probably off fucking the professor._

Something snaps in her mind, and without warning, she raises the earth from beneath the floor and tears apart the foundation, snaring both creatures in a mound of wet earth, still clinging to each other as their upper bodies strain to stare at her.

Jefferson’s black eyes glint at her as the red light begins to sputter out entirely. “Price,” he rasps, struggling against his bonds even as Chloe walks forward and freezes the water within the earth, her hand outstretched.

“It’s his fault!” Nathan cries as Chloe lights one fist, then the other.

It doesn’t matter whose fault it is.

These are monsters.

Sorcerers kill monsters.

The air fills with the scent of burning fur, cooking flesh. Their entombed bodies are Chloe’s candle as she crouches down and turns Rachel’s body over, smearing her face in the pool of blood beneath her. The long slash on her neck no longer even bleeds. The red’s crusted around her throat, her mouth. There is no single blue feather. A shining silver knife lies on the floor beside her, wickedly curved and dangerous and bloodstained.

Chloe doesn’t know why she slips the knife into her pocket, then. It seems like the only thing she can do before she takes Rachel in her arms and floats back up and out of the trap door.

She can hear Arcadia dying, the howl of werewolves, the hissing of salamanders, the shriek of a dragon as it soars over the town. She walks out of the barn and stares through the trees at the flickering orange light where a town, an academy, is supposed to be.

She kisses Rachel’s immobile lips, one last time.

She turns away and walks into the Wilds, until Rachel grows heavy in her arms and everything is just a little bit quieter. She falls to her knees and cradles her body, begging her to come back. To fix this. Rachel could do anything. She always could.

The vines start to creep in around her legs, crawling up her sides, and she gives herself a halo of flame to keep them off. They scatter and leave her alone on the bare earth.

Rachel’s gone.

Everything’s gone.

She lays the body on the dirt. She sweeps her hands back, sending Rachel six feet below the surface, and then she reverses the motion and covers her, raising a burial mound above that grave, pulling rocks from beneath the surface and creating a circle. It won’t protect her, not really. But at least it will mark where she fell. Where Chloe’s tears fell. Where everything fell.

Chloe turns from the grave and heads into the darkest part of the Wilds that she can see, where no stars shine, where no moon lights her path.

She will walk until she finds something strong enough to kill her.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Willingly hypnotized_   
>  _By the glow of an arrogant idol_
> 
>  
> 
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> 
> There's more to this story.
> 
> Thank you for reading.


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